WE HAVE become accustomed to the universe blowing our minds – perhaps too accustomed. Quantum weirdness – things like particles being in two places at once, or appearing to share a telepathic link – has been baffling us for more than a century now. The physicist Richard Feynman once said that nobody really understands the quantum world. Or as others have put it: if you think you understand it, then you definitely don't. So it is tempting to throw up our hands and say human brains can never grasp it.
But maybe we shouldn't be so defeatist. Isn't it just possible that we simply haven't yet got to the bottom of how quantum mechanics really works? That's what Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano of the University of Pavia in Italy, and his colleagues Giulio Chiribella and Paolo Perinotti think – and they have been doing something ...
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